


Aequilibrium

by crimsonherbarium



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel Wings, Established Relationship, Flying, Good and Evil, Heaven & Hell, Hellfire, Holy Water, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Picnics, Post-Canon, aziraphale does the holy equivalent of falling down half a flight of stairs, aziraphale: the principality of denial, crowley saunters vaguely upward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-29 17:37:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19404982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonherbarium/pseuds/crimsonherbarium
Summary: "People like us? There are no people like us, Crowley!" Aziraphale protested.The world could have ended on an otherwise unremarkable Saturday in Tadfield, but it didn't. The earth spins on, and as it does Aziraphale and Crowley come to realize that the stance they took when things were at their most dire changed things. No longer simply angel and demon, they are becoming something entirely new.





	Aequilibrium

All things considered, Aziraphale thought to himself, Armageddon had gone about as well as one possibly could have expected.

Most major crises had been averted, the seas remained unboiled, and Adam Young could continue gallivanting about the woods with his friends and grow up the way a boy should. Perhaps most importantly: neither Aziraphale nor Crowley’s respective head offices wanted anything to do with them at the moment. They had some breathing room. There were no reports to write, no miracles to perform, no temptations to whisper into peoples’ ears. Aziraphale was free to relax in the bath with a good book and a mug of hot cocoa, and that was exactly what he did.

He was shocked when, shortly after he’d settled in and gotten comfortable, he heard the unmistakable sound of an intruder in the bookshop below.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” he muttered to himself, carefully marking his place in the book and setting it where it wouldn’t get wet. He wrapped himself in a beige tartan bathrobe, his cocoa entirely forgotten, and made his way carefully down the stairs.

The front doors of the shop were shut, and none of the windows appeared to be broken. That was good. A board creaked nearby, and Aziraphale jumped.

“H-hello?” He called out uncertainly.

There was no response.

“Oh, enough of this,” the angel said in exasperation. He snapped his fingers. _“Let there be light!”_

The shop was immediately illuminated by a bright light that emanated from somewhere vaguely above. The source of the disturbance was immediately evident in the form of a lanky demon sprawled out on his couch.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale said in disbelief. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

“Hey, Aziraphale,” Crowley replied, looking for once in his life deathly serious. “We need to talk.”

~~~~~~

“You could have phoned,” Aziraphale reproached several minutes later as he presented Crowley with a hastily-brewed cup of tea.

“No, not really.” Crowley made a pained face. “Better discussed in person, believe you me.”

Aziraphale dithered a moment, realizing suddenly that he was still wearing only his bathrobe, realizing just as suddenly that he didn’t care in the slightest, and then arranging himself carefully in the chair opposite Crowley’s. “Better get on with it, then.”

Without any preamble, Crowley swung his leg up onto the table with a bang.

“Really now,” Aziraphale chided. “Do you have to put your shoes—”

Crowley pulled up his pant leg and Aziraphale abruptly stopped talking.

“You see the problem?”

Aziraphale’s mouth opened and closed for a moment before he could make it work properly. “Yes.”

Crowley’s leg, from the ankle up to the knee, was blistered and burnt as if he’d held a hot iron against it. The marks were angry and red and looked as if they hurt tremendously.

“What on earth _happened_ to you?”

Crowley shook his head. “Dunno, exactly. But I’ve got a guess.”

Aziraphale waited for the explanation, still eyeing the marks with concern. Perhaps there was something he could do to fix it, a minor healing miracle, or at the very least some zinc ointment.

“When I was Upstairs, at your trial, they made me stand in hellfire.” Crowley gingerly rolled his pant leg back down and removed the offending foot from the coffee table. “Obviously it didn’t kill me, I’m a demon after all, but it _burned_ , angel. It burned like anything. And it shouldn’t have.”

“You mean to say that _They_ ,” Aziraphale said with a significant nod upward, “did this to you?”

“I don’t think they meant to, exactly. They were trying to kill me, after all. Well, they were trying to kill you. You know what I mean.”

Aziraphale’s brow furrowed. Crowley shouldn’t have been hurt by the hellfire in the slightest. Hell was full of it, after all. If demons were capable of being burnt then Hell’s human resources department would have had quite a lot of injury on the job complaints to sort through. A demon being burnt by hellfire was like an angel—

His train of thought abruptly derailed, and he was left standing in the wreckage with a shocked and horrified expression on his face.

A demon being burnt by hellfire was like an angel being scalded by holy water.

Aziraphale had broken out in some nasty hives after attending Crowley’s trial and punishment in Hell—he would have been lying if he said he hadn’t had fun, it had been tremendously entertaining—but he’d written them off as incidental. He’d recently changed soaps, he really didn’t dust often enough, and he’d just been discorporated and then re-corporated rather hastily by an eleven-year-old boy who had had many more pressing things on his mind than the appropriate constitution of an angel’s physical form. He’d simply assumed that, due to an oversight, he had allergies now. Humans had them, and they dealt with them alright. He supposed he could learn to deal with them too.

But what if—

His mouth pressed into a thin line.

Crowley, who had been sitting patiently watching the gears turn behind Aziraphale’s wide eyes, raised an eyebrow.

“But what does this mean, Crowley?” Aziraphale wrung his hands.

The demon shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. If I had to put money on it? Betraying our respective sides changed things. I’m not sure how much, though.”

“Well, the holy water didn’t kill me,” Aziraphale reasoned. “I’m not Fallen, which is a tremendous relief—no offense,” he said hastily.

“Oh, none taken,” Crowley replied offhandedly.

“But what do we _do_?”

“Carry on as usual.” Crowley shrugged. “I don’t think there’s really anything to be done, angel. I sincerely doubt the Almighty is going to fancy having a chat with you over tea about this—”

“No, I imagine she’s not too keen on me at the moment,” Aziraphale mumbled.

“—And I’ll be damned if I’m going downstairs to talk with Head Office either,” Crowley finished. “So, for the moment, we’d best leave it be.”

Aziraphale nodded. “Very well. At least let me do something about those burns.”

Crowley made a vague noise of assent and rolled his trouser leg up again. The angel rubbed his hands together and then ran them along the burnt and blistered flesh. It healed and knit back together under his touch—there would be scars, he could only do so much—and Crowley sighed in relief.

“There,” said Aziraphale, feeling pleased. “How’s that?”

“Still burns, but less.” Crowley moved his ankle around experimentally. “Thanks, angel.”

“Don’t mention it.”

~~~~~~

“It’s getting worse, Crowley,” Aziraphale said as the two of them strolled along the water in St. James's Park two weeks later, after meeting for coffee at one of Aziraphale's favorite haunts.

"What do you mean?"

"Don't tell me you haven't noticed, too," the angel persisted. "Tell me, do you feel at all compelled to tempt anyone?"

"Never did it because I felt compelled," Crowley muttered. "More because it was expected of me."

"Really?" Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. "I'd always had the impression that you enjoyed it, at least a little."

Crowley sighed out through his teeth. "Fire, brimstone, godly retribution and all that—never really was my scene. Mostly I just gave people what they wanted."

"Who on earth _wanted_ the M25? Or instant coffee? Or chip-and-PIN machines?"

"Look, I had to be seen doing _some_ evil. Keep up appearances, you know."

"Mm," Aziraphale said noncommittally.

One of the many ducks floating on the surface of the pond had broken off from the rest of the flock and was eyeing them hopefully. Casting a furtive glance around, the angel snapped his fingers and miracled a slice of white bread. He tore off a corner and tossed it to the duck, which quacked gratefully.

"Anyway, of course things are changing. For the first time in six thousand years, we don't have anyone to report to. Interesting the sort of things you end up doing when you're doing them just for you, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?" Aziraphale tossed more bread into the water, and a flurry of ducks vied to be the first to gobble it up.

"Well, you're hardly answering prayers these days. What does an angel do when freed of his heavenly responsibilities?"

Aziraphale shrugged. "Read, mostly. Run the shop. Check in on some old friends every now and then. Oh—I sent rather a lovely housewarming gift to Madame Tracy and Sergeant Shadwell. It was the least I could do after the dear woman lent me her body. And..." He looked away sheepishly. "I may or may not have rigged an eBay auction for a first edition copy of a book I've been eyeing for some time now."

"See what I mean?" Crowley shoved his hands in his pockets. "You're doing things because _you_ want to. Not for me, not for the Archangel-Fucking-Gabriel, not for _The Divine Plan_."

"Was there something you needed?" Aziraphale interjected, feeling immensely guilty. "All you had to do was ask—"

"No, angel, that's not the point. If you ask me, self-interest isn't inherently bad. It's just...human."

"Human." Aziraphale ruminated on this for a moment. He had grown quite fond of the earth and the people on it over the centuries. He'd been accused by his superiors of getting too comfortable more than once. Truthfully, he'd never seen the harm in it.

"It's like I said before," Crowley said grimly, looking around at all the people out enjoying the unusually nice weather. "When the big one comes, it's going to be all of Us versus all of Them. Just as well for the humans to have people like us on their side."

"People like us? There are no people like us, Crowley!" Aziraphale protested.

The demon smiled a bittersweet smile that was half-knowing and half-wistful. "Exactly."

~~~~~~

It was a Thursday. Aziraphale had always loved Thursdays. There was a sort of contented quality to them that was not unlike slipping into one's favorite threadbare and well-loved sweater on a chilly evening, or curling up in front of the fire with a good book and a nice cup of tea with a splash of milk.

This particular Thursday was no exception. With only minimal protest, Aziraphale allowed Crowley to persuade him to close the bookshop just before lunch and take a drive out into the countryside in the Bentley instead. The weather was lovely for the time of year—there was a slight chill to the breeze, true, but the sun was shining and the sky was clear except for a few fluffy clouds scattered here and there.

Aziraphale had packed a picnic for the two of them: homemade biscuits, tea in an aging thermos that he'd miracled to keep things piping hot until you were ready to drink them, some cucumber sandwiches, an assortment of lovely cheeses from that shop that had just opened up down the street, a loaf of crusty bread, three ripe pears, and a bottle of wine to wash it all down with. All of it was packed tidily into a basket and covered with a tartan blanket.

The Bentley roared along narrow country roads barely wide enough for one car at speeds that should not have been possible. Aziraphale had put a tape into the stereo that was labeled as Johnny Cash, but came out as Freddie Mercury instead.

When it seemed like they were far enough away from London, the Bentley veered off the road and up a small gravel drive, Crowley bearing no mind to the bright orange signs that decreed NO TRESPASSING nailed to trees on either side of it. After a fashion they arrived in a lovely meadow that seemed a good a spot as any; a thick copse of trees shielded it from view of the road, and there wasn't a soul to be seen for miles around. Aziraphale retrieved his basket from the backseat and busied himself with methodically laying out the spread as if it were high tea at Buckingham Palace.

It was freeing, he thought to himself as he did so and Crowley sprawled out on the grass nearby, being able to do something like this without having to take precautions or worry about their respective head offices catching wind of them seeing each other. They'd been careful, even after Armageddon had spectacularly failed to go off, but eventually realized that neither of their sides wanted anything to do with them and were perfectly happy to leave them be, at least for the moment. Aziraphale had simply strolled out of the bookshop that morning and gotten into the Bentley, and that had been the end of it.

"Everything's ready, Crowley," Aziraphale called out as he unscrewed the top of the thermos and poured tea into each of two plastic mugs he'd brought along for the occasion.

"Right. Coming."

Crowley sat up and stretched, his wings unfurling from his shoulder blades as he did so. They flexed and beat a few times, feathers ruffled slightly by the breeze.

"I'm not certain that's wise," Aziraphale remarked with a look of disapproval, still fiddling with the thermos. "Someone could see you."

"Look around. Do you see anyone? Relax, angel." Crowley sighed in contentment. "You might want to take advantage of the opportunity, too. Not many chances to do this in central London."

"No, thank you," Aziraphale replied curtly.

"Your loss." Crowley stood, sunglass-covered eyes pointed upward, and kicked off from the ground in a flutter of dark wings.

Aziraphale shook his head. Foolish, to do something so conspicuous. True, angels had once openly roamed about the earth, wings on display as a symbol of their status, but that had been a _very_ long time ago. Aziraphale himself hadn't appeared in such a manner since biblical times.

From above, Crowley let out a whoop of exhilaration.

 _This is a bad idea,_ Aziraphale thought to himself. _We're sure to be spotted, and I'm dreadfully out of practice._

On the other hand...it really was such a lovely day, and Crowley was right, opportunities like this were very few and far between...

Aziraphale sighed with a regretful glance at his now-cooling cup of tea, still trying to convince himself that this was a bad idea, and spread his wings.

 _"Oh,"_ he said.

It felt wonderful. It was like scratching an itch he hadn't realized he'd had for the last six thousand years. It was like being stuck on a train for hours in a seat that was just slightly too cramped to get comfortable and then at last being able to stand and stretch his back out.

Crowley circled overhead, looking very much like a bird of prey.

"Oh, why not." Aziraphale took off in a flurry of light feathers, unable to contain an exclamation of joy at the sensation of the wind rushing through his hair as he soared ever higher.

"That's more like it!" Crowley shouted with a grin.

"Yes, alright," Aziraphale allowed, "Though I'm still not entirely certain I won't end up regretting this—"

A cloud crossed the sun. Aziraphale caught a glimpse of his own feathers and nearly fell out of the sky in shock.

He didn't actually fall. What he did do was plummet rapidly earthward in a semi-controlled fashion, managing to slow his descent just before he hit the ground.

Crowley followed, landing beside him moments later. Aziraphale had pulled up one of his wings so he could get a better look at it, and was suddenly feeling very faint.

"Angel, what's happened? You—oh." Crowley abruptly broke off.

Aziraphale's wings, formerly as white as newly fallen snow, were turning grey.

The white hadn't completely gone. The grey was peppered through it like grime and gravel through snow that's been scraped off the roadway by a plow. The feathers that had changed were now the same warm grey as a dove's.

"Well, that's not something you see every day," Crowley deadpanned.

Aziraphale was trying very, _very_ hard not to go into hysterics. "Why is this happening, Crowley?" he said, his voice pitched unevenly with distress. "Am I...am I Fallen?"

The angel wrung his hands. Crowley reached out and took them, squeezing them, stilling their shaking.

"No, angel, you're not Fallen," Crowley said, rubbing his thumb reassuringly over Aziraphale's palm. "I should know. Bit of an expert on the subject, me."

Aziraphale took a very deep breath.

"Didn't take much to Fall in the old days," Crowley remarked. "Clearly things are different now, though. And, er...don't take this the wrong way, angel, but even if you were cast out I doubt Hell would want anything to do with you."

Aziraphale sniffled.

"Aziraphale," Crowley said gently. "Look."

He swept his own wings forward, holding them out so the angel could see them. It was hard to tell, at first, but when the errant cloud finished crossing the sun and the light shone brightly once more, it was impossible to miss. Crowley's feathers, too, were streaked through with grey. His was a dark charcoal, almost indistinguishable from the prevailing black in places, but there nonetheless.

 _"Oh,"_ Aziraphale said, his eyes wide in wonder. "I—when did this happen?"

"Not sure." Crowley shrugged. "I think it started sometime after Armageddon. D'you know, being Upstairs almost reminded me of what it was like to be an angel?" He smiled bitterly. "Load of prats."

Aziraphale was still trying to hold himself together, but it was becoming easier with each passing moment. He made an effort to steady himself and stood up a little straighter.

"Where does this leave us?" Aziraphale hated to voice the question aloud. He was afraid of what the answer might be.

"I guess we're both somewhere in between."

Crowley neatly folded his wings away, and Aziraphale followed suit. The angel let himself be led back toward the car, to be coaxed down onto the picnic blanket and handed a plastic mug of tea that had already gone lukewarm.

"Tell me," Crowley said as he fiddled with the wine bottle, finally giving up on prying the cork from its neck and resorting to using a minor miracle to open it. "If humans had wings, what color d'you reckon they'd be?"

Aziraphale took a sip of his tea, ruminating on the question. "Grey," he replied after some thought. "They would be grey."

"They've all got a bit of Heaven and a bit of Hell in them." Crowley poured the wine, draining his own glass in two gulps and immediately refilling it. "Same as us, now. We've gone native."

Aziraphale was cross with himself. He was supposed to be the sensible one. It was strange for Crowley to be the one to think about something so logically while he was still floundering about in his own emotions.

"I suppose we have," he replied, forcing a small smile.

Crowley held out an arm and Aziraphale settled in under it, leaning against his side. They sat like that for a while, as the sun crawled inorexably down toward the horizon and Aziraphale's tea went cold, untouched, in its cup.

~~~~~~

Time went on, and the changes grew easier to take in stride. Aziraphale would sometimes notice Crowley performing the occasional blessing without being prompted, though he knew better than to bring it up. He caught himself more than once using his powers for purposes that Heaven probably wouldn't have approved of, and he found that he didn't feel as remorseful about it as he might have.

 _For us,_ he told himself. _For our side._

He was happy. He had his books, and good food, and good company. Crowley spent more time with him than not. Aziraphale was most happy when the two of them simply occupied the same space. He lived for those small, simple moments in which he would be sitting on the sofa reading a book and happen to glance up from his page and see Crowley sitting there across from him, completely engrossed in his own activity, with an expression on his face that sent a wave of affection through Aziraphale so strong he felt he might burst.

And occasionally, he'd push his reading glasses up his nose and peer at Crowley's demonic form that lurked behind what was visible, and note that his wings had now lightened to the middling grey of cigarette smoke. They lived in equilibrium, the two of them, each balancing out the other's extremes. An angel and a demon, both doing their best to learn how to be human.

And Aziraphale would turn quietly back to his book and smile.

**Author's Note:**

> I had written a little [drabble](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19372525) of a similar concept recently, and I got a few requests to write a longer piece with the same premise. I'm quite pleased with how this came out.
> 
> If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving me a comment! I love hearing what you think. <3


End file.
